Chaos: Theory and Reality

by Theron Dash

Could it be that the terrorists who created the 9-11 scenario were prophetic theorists in the application of chaos theory to politics and society? Did they foresee that without years of warfare, and huge quantities of blood and treasure, or even devastating weapons to wipe out millions, they could destroy the United States of America? Did they realize that they could do it with just a single day of dramatic horror, much as the well-placed, well-timed flap of a paradigmatic butterfly's wing could eventually cause a hurricane?

We are well on the way to providing their descendants with the material to support such a boast. The dominoes are still falling, but the pattern is clear: America is well on the way to destroying itself.

The events of 9-11 emboldened the hot-wired fanatics and coolly arrogant overseers of ruling class interests populating the Bush administration and their corporate (including media) and Rabid Right support system to manipulate the more infantile instincts of the public to power their apparently self-serving but dangerously delusionary agenda into consequential reality.

Now those consequences are being felt in virtually every home, in every corner of this noisy but numbed republic. With the federal purse closed to every institution except the military, and with prospect of federal poverty and inaction for years to come, the states and local governments are now facing destruction they can no longer hide. In the wealthiest nation in the history of the world, the states cannot fund programs to lend a life-giving hand to the poor, the sick and the old. They cannot lend a life-changing hand to poor and middle class children in the form of good schools and affordable higher education, or in support for the arts and other preposterously inexpensive ways of transforming lives with benefit to all.

And that's just the beginning. Local governments are facing the kind of decisions appropriate to nations mired in poverty or devastating warfare. Because people are being fired and infrastructure support is being neglected, there will be homes that burn down and people burned to death inside them because America cannot afford adequate fire departments. There will be people who suffer and die when earthquakes and storms wreak havoc because America cannot afford to provide timely assistance. Very quietly and individually, there will be people who suffer and die because America cannot afford to provide basic medical care to those who need it, especially now that even emergency room doors are often closed to those without enormously expensive insurance.

No one knows who the victims will be of ordinary but increasingly dangerous misfortunes. We will all soon be forced to understand that few homes, very neighborhoods, and no cities or regions will be as secure as they were just a few years ago.

Each state and locality has its particular layers of additional responsibility for their plight: bad laws, bad governmental practices, bad corporate behavior, bad politics. But since these situations are being repeated throughout America, there is a national responsibility.

Where is America's wealth going? It is going to the wealthy, partly in the form of enormous tax cuts. It is going to the military industrial complex, and it's going down the drain of misconceived warfare and occupation in Iraq. The Bush administration is responsible, and the media and the American people are complicit, however unconsciously or mistakenly.

Consider the blood lust exhibited at the news that Saddam's sons were killed. Consider the rules of engagement there, in which any returned fire permitted total destruction and killing of everyone---in this case, the sons (whose brutality and sadism had been visited on Iraqis, not Americans, who presumably have the right to set their own priorities) and a fourteen year old grandson. Consider that a few million dollars would make a huge difference in many American communities right now, and that the informant who led American troops to Saddam's sons will be paid rewards totaling some 30 million dollars. The current wave of triumphant preening and prediction that these killings spells the end of Iraqi resistance to America's criminally confused occupation will likely prove to be the usual wishful thinking, as it is the same kind of willful blindness and imagery-will-make-it-true so consistent with this delusionary policy as well as the fundamentalist mindset of much of the Rabid Right.